Loveland, Colorado, A Sam's Club Warehouse

March 10, 2018

Loveland, Colorado. The alarm on the Trucker’s phone dingles. 40 degrees. Not cold enough to run the heater, not warm enough to make rolling out a pleasure. Time to grab a jacket, and head to the restaurant/convenience store/restroom building. Across the lot, over the curb, across the strip of decorative stone and desert bushes where dogs have been, across another lot, up the steps.

No breakfast yet. Back in the truck, the Passenger tidies up the bunk, while the Trucker starts the engine to build up air pressure. The brakes will not release until sufficient pressure has been built up.

In the still morning, a half moon glows from a clear sky. A sprinkling of stars, though most are obscured by light pollution from the truckstop and parking lot. The trucks parked around us are mostly different than they were when we began our night. Some rest quietly. Others, with either engines or generators on, rumble through the night.

Out on I-25, the Trucker points ahead to the left. That long row of lights? Is where we are going. Right at the light, on Sam’s Club Drive. The Trucker stops at the guard house and walks in with his paperwork. Then it is down to the end of the lot, around a corner, and park at a staging area. Wait ten minutes, and enter the building to receive a dock door number.

But this lot! Easily more than half a mile long, acres of pavement. Double rows of loaded WalMart Trailers, hundreds of them. Several WalMart tractors cruise slowly along, reading the seven digit number stamped on the front of each trailer, searching for their assigned load for the day. Around the corner, another double row of trailers, with more tractors searching among them. And this is just one side of the building!

This distribution center was built in 1990, and has 1,0780,000 square feet under roof, with conveyor belt lengths measured in miles.  A marvelous place this would be for a good brisk walk while waiting. The Passenger would love to walk, and count the trailers in just one row, to estimate how many total. But alas, safety regulations prohibit “non-essential personnel” from strolling the lot.

Parking at the staging area, the Trucker waits ten minutes as instructed, then enters the building. The lady behind the counter pulls a pager from a machine, and hands it to the Trucker. Back into dock door 192 (that’s near the corner; 194 doors on just one side of the building), drop the trailer, circle around, and park the tractor back in the staging area. Space between the trailers already dropped seems impossibly narrow, but the Trucker manages just fine. And trailers must be dropped to cancel the risk of miscommunication that might cause a driver to pull away from the dock while warehouse employees are still in the trailer.

Light begins to show in the east, behind a bank of clouds gliding across the sky. All is amazingly quiet here, but for the distant rumble of a truck not yet unhooked at the dock, and a yard truck zipping round behind the building.  41 degrees.  The truck is chilly.  

Two tractors have joined us at the staging area. An unmarked Peterbuilt, and a Freightliner from Thunder Express, Inc. Down the line is another from BM Trucking, El Paso, Texas. Hmmm, couldn’t they have been a bit more creative with that name?

A bit less than an hour, and the pager goes off.  Lights flash, and a computerized voice gives instructions.  Repeatedly, until picked up and shut off.  In the small alcove at the building's corner, the cheery receptionist hands the Trucker his bills, and explains that because he has a drop for another warehouse yet on his trailer, he will need to re-hook, pull his trailer forward, close the doors, and wait til she comes out to place a load lock on the trailer doors.  This is required to get out of the gate. 

Full daylight has come.  A stiff breeze blows from the east.  A brilliant white, newly risen sun burns through the eastern cloud cover.  High overhead, the half moon still glows, diminished now by the strength of the sun.

A short wait for the load lock, through the lot, 

to the guard house to show papers again.  

The Trucker updates his logbook as the morning sun shines onto the bills and shadows his face.

The Passenger notes now that the whole facility is surrounded by a high chain link fence, topped with three strands of outward facing barbed wire.  The city is spread out in all directions, encircled by distant mountains.  "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about His people..." comes to mind.  The LORD is here, even in the dry brown of Loveland, Colorado in March.

Back onto I-25, picking up speed, and a pleasant breeze blowing in the open window.  42 degrees, and on to the last stop in Tracy, California!